It's the start of a brand new week, but there is no stopping the rupee slide. The Indian currency collapsed to hit a new all-time low of 72.67 against the dollar on Monday. So, what's taking a toll on the rupee, the rupee fell lower in trade today after markets open pointed to a stronger dollar demand by importers.
NSE
B Prasanna, head - global markets at ICICI Bank, Nick Parsons, head - research & strategy at ThomasLloyd and Gareth Leather, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics discusses the weakness of the rupee and its impact on the economy.
"It is a double whammy which is going on, Prasanna said. "Over the weekend, the strong US nonfarm payrolls data actually led the US Index appreciating, the dollar ex-appreciating other G7 and G3 currencies."
The growth is expected to be very good in the US and not only the labour data but also the wage growth came on the higher side indicating that the Fed is going to hike rates, possibly two more this year and three more next year, Prasanna added.
On the rupee sell-off, Nick Parsons said, when the dust settles they will look at the value in India and what is very clear is that across the emerging market (EM) universe the dust hasn’t settled yet.
"We are less than 10 days away from a US rate hike, we have had strong US numbers on Friday with the jobs report and still, investors are preferring the dollar over the EM universe," said Parsons.
The question is going to be why has India underperformed the rest of EM rather than just why is the EM universe under pressure, he said.
On emerging currency fall, Gareth Leather said, the sell-off in Asian countries has a bit further to go and the factors that have been weighing on MSCI, you got rising US treasury yields, you got the trade war between the US and China and you got contagion from the crisis in Argentina and Turkey.
"Now I do not see either of those going away anytime soon," Leather said. "So those are the factors driving Asian currencies lower then it makes sense they go further to fall over the next few months.”
First Published:Sept 10, 2018 9:28 PM IST